First Meetings, Final Partings
by Gwaeros
Summary: and many more in between... A series of drabbles and ficlets, mainly about Aragorn. Originally a two-shot, now extended to a series Chapter 4 - Beyond All Doubt? (Denethor and Aragorn). Please read & review.
1. First Meetings

**A/N: A drabble and a half that refused to leave me alone. Please read and review. If this inspiration strikes, this may be updated**

**First Meetings**

Their eyes meet across a field of death, two men-children of noble birth and grey-eyed solemnity. It is a momentary glance, a silent check-in between adrenalin and exhaustion, but it connects them in a way they cannot understand.

Though they know it not, this day will bind their fates, shifting the threads of their future into a different weave. They have known each other for mere minutes; no names, no titles, only swift-kindled friendship between those who must fight shoulder to shoulder, back to back, but it is enough.

Later they take stock over bandages, and, huddled next to the fire, the elder dips his head and holds out his hand.

"Well met, kinsman. Halbarad is my name, and I thank you for your aid."

The younger bridges the gap with a nervous smile, and they clasp hands in a universal greeting.

"Well met indeed, Halbarad. My name is Estel."


	2. Final Partings

**A/N: Another drabble and a half, sort of a bookend to the first one**

**Final Partings**

"Halbarad!"

The panicked cry wakes Arwen from the path of elven dreams, airy stone chambers replacing the remembrance of her father's rooms in Imladris. Beside her, Aragorn is caught in far more heart-wrenching memory, tossing and turning as he reaches out in desperation for a friend he cannot save.

How many times has she woken thus, these last two years? Tears well in sympathy at the horrors he has endured to reach this place. For how many more times has he woken alone?

A whimper escapes his throat as she gathers him to her, and as his own tears began to fall, she curses Sauron, curses him doubly for mother and husband, and many times over for friends who should not have been lost, who were taken too young.

The Dark Lord has been defeated, his towers thrown down, but memories of a final parting still haunt the new King.

**A/N: Please read and review**


	3. Where The Stars Look Strange

**A/N: The Appendices tell us Aragorn explored the South and the East after he left Gondor, yet he came to Lórien the same year, in fact, barely months later. So in my headcanon at least, he travels Khand, Harad and Umbar between serving in Rohan and Gondor, and only to Rhûn after he left Gondor. Thengel King must have liked him, and I think he let Aragorn go off on his own wanderings for a time. This also allows Aragorn to have knowledge and understanding of Umbar preceding the assault on the harbour. (This is of course just my opinion) **

_'He rode in the host of the Rohirrim, and fought for the Lord of Gondor by land and by sea; and then in the hour of victory he passed out of knowledge of Men of the West, and went alone for into the East and deep into the South, exploring the hearts of Men.'_ – Appendix A

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**Where The Stars Look Strange **

For eighteen cycles of the moon he has wandered this desert, first east until he struck lands untouched by the enemy, then ever southward where the stars are strange, where dark-skinned traders gather in cities of tents and herders cluster around the dwindling water. He walks as one of them now, a trader from the north undaunted by the southern wastes; his parched lips have tasted death in the sand and rejected it. The lessons of this harsh land have been taught, he has learned, and he will not be defeated again, not while his hope lasts, and he rations it as carefully as he does water, for he needs both if he is to survive to walk the forests of the North again.

And North his heart calls him, but his journey is far from over, and perched upon a great beast he treks ever southwards with his caravan. Between dunes that roll ever onwards like a great and golden sea his heart is wrought with yearning for salt-spray on his lips, for rain in his hair and west-wind on his face, and when bandits trouble them on the second day he finds his hope running lower with his drink. Blood drains into the sand as he kills the leader, lays him to his eternal rest in a scorching grave beneath an eye that looms huge at midday, and the caravan trundles onwards, inching its inexorable way further from his heart. And in the evenings as the sky darkens, the setting sun reminds him of her, and the stars that twinkle out are like her eyes, ancient but beautiful in a sea of raven hair. But she looks upon a different sky, and he wrenches his thoughts away, staring into the dusk for glimpse of distant green.

If luck does not fail them, he is told, they will reach the _Myûmbe*_ within the week, the great towering forests where the air itself is like water and strange animals swing from treetops. Ever has Rohan and Gondor tasted the fruits of these strange lands, and he would see them while the trade routes remain open, would taste the foreign spices and learn the people who grew and harvested them. And maybe, just maybe, he will find a measure of peace amongst the trees, distant as they may be from his homeland.

Because for eighteen cycles of the moon he has wandered in desert and in drought, and even the hardiest of men must seek an oasis.

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*An M.E. alteration from Mayombé – an area in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where Google tells me there are large areas of forest

**A/N: I am taking liberties with the lands south of Harad, after all, the map doesn't reach that far and it can't _all_ be desert. So I have given them a rainforest :) **

**Please read and review. **


	4. Beyond All Doubt?

**A/N: Despair and Hope. I own nothing. Un beta-ed. **

1 - "Denethor has gone to the tombs," said Pippin, "and he has taken Faramir, and he says we are all to burn, and he will not wait, and they are to make a pyre and burn him on it, and Faramir as well. And he has sent men to fetch wood and oil." – _The Pyre of Denethor, The Return of the King_

2 - "Come!" he cried, and drew his sword, and it flashed in the twilit hall of the Burg. "To the stone of Erech! I seek the Paths of the Dead. Come with me who will!" – _The Passing of the Grey Company, The Return of the King_

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**Beyond All Doubt****?**

Despair is only for he who sees the end beyond all doubt, and Denethor has seen it, seen it flicker and burn in the orb beneath his fingers, heard it in the mournful horn-call drifting from the north, felt it in the feverish skin of his second son.

For Denethor, unerringly proud even in the depths of his grief, there is no hope. Gondor will fall, Sauron has made certain of it, and even now the Corsairs sail upon his city, sail to stain the stones with blood and tear down all that was right and fair. The Dark Lord has stolen his sons from him, will rape and pillage his city and spread ruin amongst his people, but Denethor, Denethor will choose his own end.

Let them burn, he and Faramir, let them burn on a pyre of their own making, because for Gondor, as for Boromir, there will be no sunrise.

"Fetch oil and wood!"

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Despair is only for he who sees the end beyond all doubt, and Aragorn has seen Gondor's doom in the flickering orb beneath his fingers, seen the fires and the black ships and The Eye, tasted the fear that sours in every gut from the Westfold to Minas Tirith itself.

And he has reeled from that encounter, felt his knees buckle and his strength wane, seen his own terror reflected in Halbarad's eyes, and choked back his own tears in the pale morning that seems as much like an end as a new dawn.

But still the company holds true, if only for a time, and no matter his own pain and his own weakness, Aragorn will not let the White City fall. The Great Battle of the Age may be looming, but the Grey Company have horses swift and a prophecy to guide their footsteps, have bonds of fellowship to overcome all hardship, and while feet move and arms hold, they will have hope.

_For Estel he is named, and Estel he shall have, until the fight is over, or death takes him. That is his oath. _

"To the Stone of Erech!"

**A/N: Please read and review. I have several others LoTR stories posted if you enjoyed this one. **


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